by arthur Weinreb, associate Editor,
September 3, 2004
a perception exists that on the political scale, the Toronto Sun is a small "c" conservative newspaper. It is true that many of the Sun’s columnists such as Peter Worthington, Bob McDonald and Sue-ann Levy write from a conservative perspective. and, the paper’s editorial stance is conservative--the editors favour smaller and less intrusive governments and are constant critics of government waste and mismanagement. But other items appear in the Sun from time to time to cast doubt on the publication being a true conservative newspaper. although it could be argued that these items are merely balance, they are sometimes extreme to say the least--things that would not normally appear in a true small "c" conservative newspaper.
Last Tuesday the Toronto Sun ran a Donato cartoon showing a statue of Winston Churchill. a man and a woman are standing beside the statue and the man is holding a newspaper with the headline, "Guiliani compares Bush to England’s Winston Churchill". The woman is saying, "That statue just barfed". Former New York mayor made the comparison between Bush and Churchill, because like Churchill who recognized Hitler for what he was while other leaders sought to appease him, George W. Bush recognized al Qaeda and their Taliban supporters for what they are and took decisive action. and andy--if you happen to see this column, the Hitler that is referred to is adolf, the guy who led Germany in the 30s and 40s--not Toronto mayor David Miller. add to this, columnist Eric Margolis’ weekly screed about the Great Satan to the south and it is apparent that when it comes to the United States, the Sun can hold its own with the Toronto Star.
Okay so that was just one cartoon. But in the same issue of the Sun, columnist Mark Bonokoski wrote an article entitled, "Her heart is in the right place". It told the tearful story of Jennifer Malo who attained the beloved status of single-motherhood when her gang-member husband got blown away in a Bloor Street West café. She was given money by a Toronto area MP so her daughter could attend summer camp. That MP--Carolyn Parrish. as touching as the story was, and as nice as it was that Malo’s daughter could be able to go to camp, Bonokoski writes as if Carolyn "Damn americans; I hate those bastards; "the coalition of idiots" Parrish should be elevated to sainthood. Even the liberal Toronto Star that is politically and philosophically aligned with Parrish hasn’t tried to rehabilitate this embarrassment to Canada (as the Star referred to her) in this manner. The combination of Donato’s cartoon and Bonokoski’s column in the same issue of the paper is much more than a balance to the paper’s editorial stance.
The Toronto Sun uses wire services for their international news; services which do have a left leaning bias. For example on Monday, the paper ran an article about Mahatma Gandhi’s grandson urging Palestinian refugees to simply march into Israel to get there land back. In the 352 word article there was absolutely no mention of the thousands of Jews who became refugees in the Middle East. add this to Margolis’s columns and a substantial part of the Sun can hardly be described as conservative.
The significance of what the Toronto Sun is becoming is that with the ever leftward drift of the National Post and with age overtaking columnists like Worthington and McDonald, there will soon be no voice for those who do not subscribe to small "l" and large "L" liberal views that so dominate this country’s media.